Today I shall be Mainly...

[Wendyf]

I hope your problem is sorted Stanley. If you add things to your earlier posts it gets missed completely by those of us who read your posts early on, please do new posts instead!

[Stanley]

Will do Love. All seems to be well, the boiler is still firing! Ask Col if I did the right thing. i'd value his opinion.

[PanBiker]

Sounds good to me Stanley. We have a very long run on our condensate outlet as the boiler is on an inside wall and it has to run full length of one wall inside and another outside. In 2012 when we had a prolonged cold spell I ended up disconnecting mine completely at the first turn under the boiler. I ran it for the duration into a bucket, still have it on a push fit connector for if push comes to shove.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Ian, nice to have a bit of back up!

[Stanley]

Boiler functioning well.....
I shall be keeping warm and upright!

[PanBiker]

Not going to school. Up at 7am ready for work but the school has called it early this morning and decided to remain shut. I didn't think they would repeat yesterdays cock up of opening and then shutting at 10am.

[Tizer]

In the past there was a silly rule whereby teachers had to turn up and were then sent home. In the years around 1980 we were living in Oxfordshire about 15 miles from High Wycombe in Bucks where we both worked, with the Chilterns in between. When the heavy snows came we couldn't get over the Chilterns on the A40 and had to use the M4 through the Stokenchurch gap. We used to drive about 5 miles to the slip road which was a steep slope and wait there for the gritter wagon to come up first then follow it.

[Marilyn]

Had the very pleasant job of defrosting my chest freezer today and giving it a good wipe out.
A lovely cool job on a warm day.

[Stanley]

The whole of the country is a chest freezer at the moment Maz.
I shall be concentrating on keeping warm and safe! I don't have to walk down to the butchers, I rang Kath yesterday and she offered to have Karl her son deliver my meat as he walked home at dinnertime, he lives near me. So a big help, we can stick to the Green on our walk, people are very kind.....

[Sue]

Whilst the whole of the UK is a ski run my daughter in Coventry has next to no snow, but a couple of miles away her husbands office has been closed! There has been a lot of sewing this week. Thank goodness this wasn’t last year, its Claire and Adams first wedding anniversary tomorrow, they like us are surrounded by impassable roads...not as bad as Wendy though.

[Stanley]

She's very much in my thoughts this morning, I know what she's facing.....

[Wendyf]

We are fine, felt bad about moaning yesterday when we have a warm, cosy house, plenty to eat and are fit and healthy!
No let up in the wind yet, but hopefully it should have eased by the end of the day. All our animals have survived their incarceration so far! I feel sorry for the farmers, next door have been struggling to get water to all their stock in their barns and they have pigs, cattle and lambing ewes.
The dairy farm across on Bleara have been trying to clear the road to get the milk tanker through, I don't think it got to them yesterday. My neighbours have a stranded motorist staying with them, the police directed him this way from Crosshills and he managed to get through Lothersdale but came to a halt at the end of their track where he sat freezing for 2 hours before they found him and brought him inside!

[Tizer]

I think we were lucky by being on the edge of the worst hit area. Yesterday it was snowing all day and the wind was blowing it about but the snow was very fine and so the accumulation wasn't as great as it might have been. I couldn't describe it as the blizzard that was predicted. Last night, in the early hours, we had the supercooled snow which freezes as it hits the cold ground and turns instantly to ice. When we opened curtains on the east facing windows this morning we couldn't see out of them - it was as if the glass had been replaced with obscure glazing from top to bottom, a thick rippling layer of ice. We probably wouldn't have seen this in the past because the old windows were poor insulators and the house's heat escaping through them would have prevented the ice forming or melted it if it did form. Now, with the latest spec DG windows, the outer pane is so cold that it stays frozen up even with the room at 20C.

My cousin works part-time at the hospital, which had to declare a `major incident' overnight due to the bad conditions. She walked there this morning at about 08.00 accompanied by her husband (as a driving instructor he can't do much at the moment!) and their dog, Merlin. She texted us to say the supercooled rain had formed a hard crust on the top of the snow. As you walked on it your feet suddenly broke through and dropped about 8 inches!

We're fortunate that the freezing rain fell on thick snow. When it falls on thin snow it's more dangerous. If it falls on uncovered ground then it's terrible. I remember a winter night in the mid 1960s in Blackburn when I'd been in a pub with my mates and walked home at about 11.00. There was no snow but it had rained and the ground was frozen as a sheet of ice. It was very slippery on the flat and I had to take great care not to fall. But the final part of the 1 mile walk was up a steep hill. It was impossible to stand up on the slope and I had to crawl on my hands and knees to reach home. Even then I was sliding backwards part of the time. It took ages to get there!

Here's an explanation of supercooled rain from the web: `Freezing rain develops as falling snow encounters a layer of warm air deep enough for the snow to completely melt and become rain. As the rain continues to fall, it passes through a thin layer of cold air just above the surface and cools to a temperature below freezing. However, the drops themselves do not freeze, a phenomenon called supercooling (or forming "supercooled drops"). When the supercooled drops strike the frozen ground (power lines, or tree branches), they instantly freeze, forming a thin film of ice, hence freezing rain.'

This is why, besides being a danger for walking or driving, it can bring down power lines and trees. This happened locally about 10 years ago and it damaged some of the small trees in our garden because so much ice formed on the branches that they were bent down to ground level.

Here's Mrs Tiz's photo taken from indoors of our east-facing window glass this morning showing the supercooled rain frozen on the outer surface...

[Stanley]

We've been lucky, ice storms are awful when they develop. I've seen them in the US but never a full blown one here, just isolated episodes and they were bad enough!
I did nothing that wasn't necessary yesterday and will do the same today. I am in good nick and want to stay that way!

[Sue]

We managed a trip out for lunch yesterday with our friends. There was a change of venue to Littleborough as there was no chance wecould get to our usual pub in the hills above Todmorden. The road was clear but we still got stuck in slow moving traffic as the M62 is closed from the Rochdale junction and the traffic had all been diverted through Rochdale to Littleborough and beyond. Rows and rows of large lorries on narrow roads with traffic lights did exactly as expected, came to a complete standstill at 3.15pm in every direction through Rochdale, made worse by the sudden closure of The Blackstone Edge road at that time. The traffic had nowhere to go except Todmorden. We got home just in time.

[Wendyf]

There were reports of Colne clogging up with hgvs yesterday as the M65 became an alternative route. Is the M62 still closed?

[Marilyn]

Sounds very annoying...
We made the most of things for you (really we were thinking about you all), as we walked a local beach with its soft warm sand under our bare feet. We had walked the country markets first and tasted some lovely buttery French biscuits...

[PanBiker]

Looks like Barlick and through to the Aire Valley is between two systems now. Roads are all perfectly clear through to Skipton and then on to Keighley. We made it there and back perfectly OK to Victorai Hall in Keighley last night. Moss, Colne to Cowling is a bit of a mess though I believe.

[Stanley]

Bottom line is that we haven't enough resource or equipment on tap for an event like this. A gamble is taken every year on it being a mild winter. This year we got bit..... Rocking Stones is a disaster waiting to happen in these circumstances.
I shall have aNOTHER MINIMUM DAY BUT THE SIGNS ARE THAT AN IMPROVEMENT IS SLOWLY SETTING IN. (Bugger caps lock!)

[Stanley]

I've done the site, had my walk and played some Solitaire to get my brain in tune. Now I can address the business of the day, the cooking, washing, housework and routine. Things could be worse!

[Sue]

Coat finished, skirt and top finished, culottes to hem today then they are finished. I have been working through the pile of UFOs ( unfinished objects) and have nearly come to the end. I can now turn my mind to warmer days and make some summer tops. Off to France later this week for our first trip of the year, it makes me think of summer!

Later I will be looking at my laptop. I switched it off the other day in full working order, and when I switched it on , on Fiday evening it won’t connect to the internet. We have tried all sorts, fleetingly it connected then went back to the fault. it says it is connected and other laptops and tablets work so its not the connection. We have cleared waste files, etc, done a virus check and everything seems ok but it will still not connect.

Out for a meal this evening with Claire and Adam, its Claires birthday meal plus first anniversary celebration. It is really a year, doesn’t time fly.

[Stanley]

Annoying isn't it when they do something like that.... I hope it heals itself up!
Gentle snow falling in Barlick and turning the cleared flags white but I don't think it will be about for long. Much milder....

[Stanley]

I have a yen to get back in the shed as the pressure of weather slackens but will resist it and have at least one more easy day...... I have to guard my health, less than five weeks until the clans gather for Jess's wedding....... Grand daughter Laura arrived the day before yesterday and is acclimatising in Clitheroe.....

[Wendyf]

Feeling relieved that the weather has improved. Lovely to see the ducks and hens running off down the field this morning and the ponies are back out.
The next door neighbours had three blackface ewes, each with a pair of very young lambs, out in the field below us and all but one lamb survived. They are remarkably tough little things. There are also about 40 gimmers (young ewes not in lamb this year) in the field and we were admiring the way they huddled together for warmth but apparently the farm lost over 20 lambs smothered by their mothers packing together in the same way.

[Stanley]

I was fully intending to have yet another idle day reading, I am enjoying Bankdam so much but plans have changed because this morning grand daughter Laura is visiting..... I'll have to ask Margaret how long it is since I last saw her...... ( M got straight back to me. Five years......)
Apart from that, enjoying the milder weather and fortified by Julie's news that her frogs are spawning!